SXSW Review: The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair

Whatever you might think about the war in Iraq, it has created an entire subgenre of films in the past few years, mostly documentaries. We've seen films focusing on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, films shot from the point of view of ordinary Iraqi citizens, films about Al Jazeera's coverage of the war, and last year I even saw a documentary about USO comedians entertaining troops in Iraq. The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair is one of the latest in this series, and it's at the opposite end of the spectrum from the comedians' point of view. The documentary examines the experiences of a prisoner of war sent to Abu Ghraib.

Yunis Abbas is a longtime journalist and photographer in Iraq. In 2003, U.S. military invaded his home on the grounds that it was a suspected terror cell. Abbas and his brothers were thought to be making bombs to assassinate Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair. Abbas spent nine months in Abu Ghraib even though no evidence could be found to support the allegations, and the U.S. was aware that he had no useful information to impart about terrorism plots.